Xobni, Nitroboost your Outlook!

I was going through the unsuccessful takeover attempts by Microsoft in the recent times. Along with big guns like Facebook, Yahoo, etc I saw a lesser heard, weird name, Xobni. If you are wondering about the strange name, Xobni is inbox written backwards. But, except the name everything else about Xobni is clear and straightforward.
Xobni is a plugin for the Microsoft Outlook, which helps you organize, manage and analyze your mail, contacts and the mailing patterns very easily. It integrates itself nicely into your outlook, as a retractable sidebar and provides you extensive information whenever you select a mail on main panel. Like, it tells you about the person sending the mail, how many mails you people have exchanged, the past conversations, list of attachments exchanged, the graphical meter on time of day he usually sends you mails. And for each contact, it creates a profile containing his rank (based on your interaction with the person), his social network, i.e. the people whom he sends mail frequently. It also extracts his contact details and phone numbers.
The best part is the side bar is designed in a very neat way to access all the information. Xobni is also highly stable. I never had my outlook crashed because of Xobni. And in fact Xobni has made the mailing experience as interesting as if you are in Facebook or MySpace. You get to know the people with whom you are dealing with and whom they are dealing with. You also have the Xobni analytics which brings in even more analytic details about the mailing patterns.
Simply put, it is like adding a nitro button to your Outlook. Right now in the public beta phase, I got a chance to download and install it. You can download the Xobni beta from the Xobni website, and the package is very small (3 MB). Installation is also fairly simple, a few mouse clicks and you are ready. Next, Xobni will index your mails and get itself ready for the show. This might take a few minutes, depending on your mailbox size. Once this is done, you get a revamped and empowered Outlook. It is really worth using. Once you get along with Xobni, you can’t do without it. That is the kind of impact it makes on you.
On the downside, Xobni works only on Outlook 2003/2007 under Windows XP and Vista. I was disappointed to find Xobni is not of use in my office running Windows 2000, really a big let down. Another thing is Xobni does not work on your outlook pst files.
Outlook has been dominating the mail client market for over a decade. But, the improvements have been happening in snail pace. Third party apps like this could boost up the development cycle and make it better.
Xobni Website
Xobni Download

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